


The Benefits of Troll Culture

by benrumo



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-26
Updated: 2011-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-24 23:38:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benrumo/pseuds/benrumo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As if life after death didn’t suck enough, Dave has to deal with being stuck with a troll. And not just any troll, but a troll who’s watched every moment of his life from a computer screen a universe away and has a very, very good memory.</p><p>(Sort-of same AU, alternate timeline to my other fic, You're in My Bubble.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated/Inspired by KidKyan's freakin' awesome Stridercest pics found here: http://kidkyan.tumblr.com/post/10004076671/stridercest-it-really-is-bros-hand-ranaway
> 
> Also posted on my Tumblr account, if Tumblr's more your thing: http://unbosomedadoxography.tumblr.com/

Dave never thought of Bro as his brother.

That’s not the entire truth.

He thought of Bro as his bro back before he knew any better. When he was a tiny little cool kid dodging mashed pea baby food, he thought of Bro as his bro. In fact, he never questioned Bro’s self-description until third grade. It made sense, on the outside. Other kids at school had big bros. None as cool as Bro, but Dave couldn’t fault them for that. There was no one else as cool as Bro. His peers (he was too cool for friends back then) admitted that the first time Bro came to pick him up from school.

There he was, waiting for his Bro out front with the other Kindergartners when out of nowhere, Lil’ Cal’s plush puppet fist appeared on his shoulder. He whipped around, looking for Bro, only to find a dozen wide-eyed Kindergartners staring in every which direction. They didn’t have a clue what was going on, but he did. This was far from the first time Bro had challenged him to a duel.

Dave went to grab his sword (not a real sword back then, just a knife, really), only to remember the lame school rule forbidding weapons on school grounds. They even did sylladex checks each morning. Bro hadn’t known that (or maybe he just hadn’t told Dave) when he sent Dave off to school that morning, but he’d instructed Dave to leave his knife at home anyway. Dave wasn’t quite skilled enough in sylladex use to keep objects from randomly flying out at inopportune moments. That was OK when Dave was at home and the only person he could injure was himself, but Bro wisely decided they’d hold off on weaponizing him in a classroom setting.

Dave youth rolled almost on instinct when he caught a blurry, shadowy haze in the corner of his eye. Lil’ Cal appeared in the space where he had been standing the moment he vacated it.

While he rolled, Dave reflected that it wasn’t like Bro to telegraph his attacks like that. He didn’t have long to consider the thought. He regained his footing and immediately began fending off Lil’ Cal’s plush attacks. Lil’ Cal was using tae kwon do movements, a sign that Bro wanted him to work on his own martial arts skills, so Dave shifted his stance and let the kicks and punches fly.

Dave was almost disappointed that Bro cut the battle short by letting him KO Lil’ Cal after only a few minutes of what was more a demonstration of his forms than an actual test of skill. But Dave was never one to look a gift Horse in the mouth. He knew the necessity of Bro kicking his ass on a regular basis, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

Dave and Bro met eyes from across the sidewalk, both through identical cool shades. He couldn’t read Bro’s expression. He never could break that guy’s poker face unless Bro wanted him to. But that didn’t stop him from noticing the thumbs up both Bro and Lil’ Cal gave him.

The other kids, Dave’s peers, screamed their little heads off. Not because the little demonstration had scared them (the adults had that range of the emotional spectrum covered), but because they were actually cheering. Dave was so confused he actually forgot to return Bro’s thumbs up. For a second he thought they were cheering for Bro. That was the only thing that made sense. But all hundred of those little kid eyes were glued to Dave, not Bro. They were cheering for him. It was the first time anybody had cheered for him.

Before his new little fans could start crowding in, Bro swept Dave off his feet and ran back to their apartment. (Bro was as skilled a parkourist as he was a fighter. As far as Dave knew, he’d never once stepped foot in a car.) Bro knew without asking that he was hella confused. He explained once they were both back in the sacred confines of the Strider abode.

“Gotta establish your reputation, little dude.”

But this isn’t that memory. This is a completely different memory, from years later.

Dave was about to turn another year older than all the kids around him thanks to his late birthday (yet another way Dave was infinitely cooler than his peers). He was at home, chilling with Bro and playing a shitty video game he got packaged with his Burger King meal. This wasn’t the first time Dave realized that he thought Bro wasn’t really his bro, but it was the first time he acted on it.

Bro had this god awful habit of kissing Dave on the head that he no doubt picked up from some shitty 80’s parenting movie. He used to have several of those lying around for ironic purposes. No doubt the kiss was ironic too.

That kiss was really beginning to piss Dave off.

But it wasn’t just because being kissed on the head like a little tyke was the single most uncool action Bro subjected him too. It was slowly becoming more than just an indignity. It was becoming a symbol of everything that felt wrong between the two of them.

Looking back, Dave never could pinpoint when he started second-guessing Bro’s bro story. On the surface, there was nothing to question. Bro wasn’t old enough to be his dad, they looked alike, and other kids had big bros who kicked their asses. Usually it was because the big bro wanted to establish a proper pecking order instead of teach the little bro all their mad skills, but that wasn’t what got Dave to questioning.

There was never any evidence to make Dave doubt Bro’s story. It was just something he felt, and Strider's don’t ignore their instincts. He never questioned Bro on the matter. Come on, how could he? You can’t have a straight conversation with that guy. It’s all puppets and irony with Bro. Besides, it’s uncool to just cut to the chase like that.

What Dave did instead was possibly the single most uncool thing he ever did.

Instead of out-scoring Dave at another round of Sneak King, Bro glitched the game out, getting the King stuck in a knee-high bush. It was his signature coup d'état. Bro may have constantly pulled his punches, but he never let Dave win.

Bro leaned over to deliver another one of those shame-kisses like a punch to the skull. Dave couldn’t stand it any longer. He’d had just about enough of this shit. The instant before Bro made contact, Dave channeled all of his mad skills into a counter-attack.

Sparks flew as lips met lips. Dave’s system overloaded with the rush. Even before Bro broke the contact, Dave began wondering what kind of massive idiot he must have been to think that this was a good idea. This was so uncool. Too uncool. And too much more, besides. Dave was old enough already to understand just what incest meant and how wrong it was supposed to be. But all the while Dave was beating himself down, his gut told him he wasn’t wrong. Bro wasn’t his bro. Things were wrong as they were. They were family, that much was undeniable, but they were never meant to be brothers.

Bro pulled back, but he didn’t pull away. He looked down on Dave with his unreadable poker face for an infinitely long minute. Dave could feel himself boiling under that stare, but he held his ground, kept his own poker face as unreadable as he could. He’d already shown all his cards, no need to start showing his heart too. This was it. Dave knew it. This messed up situation was finally going to get resolved.

Then Bro, of all things, leaned down and kissed him again. Just a little peck on the lips, like Dave saw little old grannies do on TV.

It was infuriating.

And it was only the first of many. Bro stopped planting little tyke kisses to the top of his head and started granny kissing him instead. Every single day, Dave was subjected to this mockery. Bro knew what the kiss had meant, and he was throwing it back in Dave’s face in this ultimate display of irony. It made Dave burn with so much righteous fury that his swordplay suffered. The scar on his left hip was the result of Bro face-smacking him with, of all fucking things, Lil’ Cal. Dave had thrown every last bit of shame and anger he had into that strife. It was a huge mistake. The red haze that filled his vision left him blind and wide-open. Bro was a master swordsman. He’d never left Dave with anything more than tiny nicks that hardly bled. This had been Dave’s fault.

And to make matters worse, the cut had sliced through the top of his jeans, nowhere low enough to be scandalous but definitely in the pants area. Bro had held the bundle of bandages he’d thrown over Dave’s wound the whole run to the hospital, like he didn’t even trust Dave to do that properly. And all the while, a little voice in the back of Dave’s head mocked him: This is the closest he’s ever going to get to getting in your pants.

The cut just barely nicked muscle, but any sort of rigorous physical activity was out for more than a month after. The wound scarred, a permanent reminder of many things, the least of which was how stupid it was to lose his temper with a stronger opponent.

Another year past and Dave more or less gave up. He suffered the thousand little indignities, the evil granny kisses. His feelings never faded, like the phase he at one point attributed them to. In fact, they grew. But if there’s one thing Striders are good at, it’s ignoring their emotions. Cool kids don’t let their emotions take over. In fact, that is the exact opposite of cool. Dave expected the status quo to remain static for the rest of their lives.

But all that changed when Dave least expected it.

It was Dave’s 13th birthday. Bro had pulled him out of school for “family reasons” and drug him off to Peru without any warning or explanation. It wasn’t the first time Bro had dragged him off to some godforsaken corner of the world for training, but it was definitely one of the coolest. Dave had to fight hard to keep his poker face when he first set eyes on the ruins of Machu Picchu.

There was no one around. Dave had no idea how Bro had managed that one. Maybe it was because of the light rain, or maybe it was because they were there at the ass-crack of dawn, but they had the whole abandoned city to themselves.

It was perfect. The Strider brothers had their most epic strife to date. The strife went for three rounds, as was the norm. The first round went decidedly to Bro, but the second ended almost in Dave’s favor. Dave ordered Bro not to take it easy on him just because it was his birthday. He switched his stance to one of the newer forms he’d learned, one he wasn’t very proficient in, and taunted Bro forward.

Bro came at him like a bat out of hell. It wasn’t five seconds before Dave was flat on his back with Bro’s sword at his neck, completely defeated but not humiliated by the loss. There was nothing quite like a good ass kicking from Bro, not because he enjoyed the defeat but because nobody saw Bro this close to his best but Dave. Dave was the only one who would ever know just how powerful and how undeniably cool his Bro was.

Bro capchalogued his sword and wished Dave a happy 13th birthday. It was perfect, so goddamned perfect.

Dave’s body moved practically of its own accord. It was hard balancing out the warrior’s need to follow his instinct and his coolkid’s need to make every single action incredibly intentional, or at least seem that way. Dave’s downfall would always be “seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Dave grabbed Bro and pulled him down for some sloppy makeouts. No more of this granny kiss bullshit. He was thirteen years old and he knew what he wanted. He didn’t care that he was never going to get it, he just wasn’t going to let Bro ignore it and mock it any longer.

Dave was never more surprised at any point in his life than when Bro kissed him back.

Fuck, but Bro knew how to kiss. Predictable, in a way. There probably wasn’t anything that Dave was better than Bro at. Nothing good, anyway. But for this moment none of that mattered, except how good it felt when Bro opened his mouth and let Dave’s tongue slide against his.

But once again, Bro cut things short. A gloved hand found Dave’s jaw and pushed his head back down onto the damp stone. The disappointment was just as overwhelming as the euphoria.

“You know how to kiss.”

It was an accusation, not a question.

“Shit, did you think you were stealing the virgin kiss of a defenseless, Victorian maiden?” Dave drawled, a little more sarcastic than the situation called for.

Bro raised an eyebrow and Dave fought down the blood suddenly rushing to his face.

“I wanted to know how to do it properly. I can’t sit around waiting for you to teach me everything.”

Dave let the implication hang in the air and, god, he hoped Bro got it.

“Who?”

“Cindy Lou Who. Why the fuck does it matter?” Dave shot back.

Bro actually had the gall to laugh at him. Dave was a second away from shoving Bro off and repeating the past mistake that left him with that scar when Bro raised his free hand to his lips. He wiped away a small trace of spit at the corner of his mouth with his thumb, and the rest he licked away. The same tongue that Dave now knew the exact texture of slid across the lips he wanted more than anything.

Dave felt a smile spread under Bro’s hand as Bro leaned down to kiss him again. More than a smile, a goddamned declaration.

He’d won.


	2. Chapter 2

Your name is DAVE STRIDER. You are back in the PRESENT, which is to say that you are no longer strolling down memory lane like some chump asshole with nothing better to do than look back on all the good times you miss.

Oh, wait. You do have nothing better to do than be that chump asshole. You’re DEAD, which means that every time you fall asleep your mind rewinds to the various points in time when you weren’t COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. You find little consolation in the fact that ALPHA DAVE is still out there somewhere being awesome and alive.

On the bright side, it no longer bothers you so much that the coolest guy in the universe, your Bro, is ALSO DEAD. Death lost its ability to horrify you once you experienced it for yourself. Perhaps this is because it no longer had the terrifying element of the unknown to it that sets all human subconscious’s at unease. Or maybe it’s because you now have first-hand evidence that your Bro is more than maggot-food. You find solid comfort in the thought that he’s out there floating in his own bubble, just like you, only cooler.

However, none of these thoughts make it any easier to deal with the fact that your HOT, THROBBING ERECTION is currently pinned against your ALIEN ROOMMATE’S THIGH. You are not sure there’s anything in the universe that could make this situation easier to deal with, excluding a RED, FLAMING METEOR crashing through the ceiling before you have to deal with how incredibly uncool this is.

Of course, no METEORS fall through your ceiling. Your afterlife isn’t that simple. You’re going to have to deal with this problem your subconscious got you into all on your own.

What will you do?

 **== > Dave: Cuddle the alien boy.**

Who, monster-dork? That is the last thing you want to do right now.

But don’t get you wrong. You think SOLLUX CAPTOR isn’t half-bad looking, for a monster-dork. There’s just simply no way he can compare to your Bro. Bro is simply the hottest there is, and the prime slice of man-meat between your legs is at attention for him and him only.

Cuddling Sollux intentionally is completely out of the question, but the evidence undeniably points to the fact that you ALREADY ARE. The two of you are lying together on BRO’S FUTON, practically spooning. Your arm is thrown comfortably around him and your head rests just under his chin. One of his arms is tucked between you, his fingers loosely stretched where they’re caught on your nose, as if he fell asleep with his hand on your face. His other hand is pressed to the back of your head. It is SICKENINGLY ADORABLE, with particular emphasis on the SICKENING aspect for you as you realize that the two of you are posed in a crude parody of the way you and Bro slept together for the first and last time two months ago. Only Bro didn’t shove his hand in your face like an unconscious asshole.

You and Sollux definitely didn’t fall asleep like this.

 **== > Dave: Admire the subconscious irony.**

No. Fuck you.

In fact, you decide that isn’t such a bad idea. Not admiring your subconscious’ sick attempt at an ironic joke, but dealing with Dave Jr. You’re so hard that imagining all the chairs and little old grannies in the world doesn’t do a thing to kill your boner. It probably doesn’t help that suggestive images of Bro keep splicing themselves into your chair-and-wrinkly-old-people mental video reel.

You pull yourself away from Sollux’s needy octopus limbs as quickly as you can without waking him up. You’re not sure he’d understand what was going on in your pants if he did happen to see you. You’re not even sure he has a dick. Various vague comments regarding alien anatomy has left you dubious on the subject. But you still aren’t willing to risk it, not when you could be upstairs in your eternally hot shower (one of the few perks of the afterlife) jerking off to the memory your subconscious has recently attempted to ruin.

You manage to rise from the futon without waking monster-dork. You adjust your jeans, sparing a moment to give yourself a bit of the attention you’re desperate for. A satisfied breath escapes your lips before you think to stop it. Yeah, you definitely need to take care of this, just in case your subconscious decides to throw anymore curveballs at you.

You turn to head upstairs, and that’s when you realize that your subconscious has already pulled out all the stops to completely screw with you. All of them.

Your living room is covered in shades of red, from the vanilla-scented candles to the rose petals trailed across the floor to the huge clusters of heart-shaped balloons.

In short, your afterlife is now a perfect recreation of last Valentine’s Day. Only your Bro’s not sprawled out on the futon in a relaxed but perfectly calculated position, shirtless and hatless and shadeless with eyes piercing straight through your clothes and a smirk teasing the corner of his mouth as he beckons you over. Instead, there’s monster-dork, already curling up in on himself in a display of sheer pathetic cuteness in your absence.

Your boner’s gone so fast you swear you can feel your dick smacking against you in protest as it falls.

Oh, hell no.

 **== > Dave: Rebel against your subconscious.**

You are going to do more than rebel, you are going to wage a war against that son of a bitch. If Karkat arguing with his past and future selves was World War III, you’re about to enact Armageddon. This shit ends now.

You sift through your specibus, but it doesn’t currently hold the precise weapon you need for this job. Your anger reaches impossible new heights. You stalk around the room, crunching the petals carelessly, to blow out all the candles while searching for the tool you need. You’ve blown out half the candles and shoved a floral arrangement into a cabinet full of old junk before you find what you’re looking for.

You face off against the clusterfuck of balloons. You hold the pen in front of your eyes like you’ve been trained to hold knives, parallel to the floor and with your thumb on the push-button that will extend the pen’s ball point. You grip your weapon so tight the plastic clip on the end digs into your calloused palm. Your stance is one of the many ironic poses Bro taught you by educating you in the ways of 80’s martial arts movies.

You stare down the balloons, giving them a moment to cower under your extreme aura of cool fury. This shit was real as a Western. You urge your subconscious to get with the program and send some tumbleweeds sailing across the ground between you and your enemy, but it passes up the opportunity, proving once and for all that your subconscious knows shit about true irony.

What’s that? Do you hear a soft cry for mercy? Not a fucking chance.

You depress the end of the pen, revealing your weapon like a samauri notching his sword out of its hilt. That’s the last your enemy sees of you before you rain blows down on its sorry, heart-shaped figure. You pop each balloon with a swift vengeance. You make a goddamned effigy out of this.

It’s not until the last rubber corpse falls cold and dead to the ground that you turn your attention to your panicking roommate.

“Theriouthly, Dave. What the fuck?”

“Just doing a little spring cleaning.”

“That thounds like an incredibly unplethant activity,” he says, rubbing his ears. You wonder how literally he means that.

Sollux doesn’t seem too concerned to wake up in your living room. You’re a bit surprised, but you shouldn’t be. It’s not the first time this has happened. You’ve even woken up a couple of times on his bedroom floor, with no memory of how you got there. Just one of the many joys of being dead and having your afterlife-space continuously invaded by a quirk of Bubble-verse physics. The only thing that makes this time different is that this time your subconscious decided to play a dangerous game.

Sollux is as calm as you want to be when he observes the room’s changes. You don’t like the way his eyes travel over everything you want to hide. You like it even less when he comments on the decorations.

“What’th the occathion?”

It’s not his fault. The two of you regularly ask one another about the various little surprises the Bubble-verse leaves for you. Maybe a week ago Sollux had re-experienced his 6th Birthday and the two of you had played with all the gifts his friends had sent him. Some time before that, you’d introduced Sollux to the 4th of July by taking the huge box of illegal fireworks Bro had miraculously conjured up last minute and setting them off on Sollux’s roof. Neither of you had shied away from these quirks of your surroundings, probably because neither of you thought you had anything to hide. You were wrong about that.

“Just an old prank I pulled on my Bro,” you lie smoothly. “Figured I’d get some of this crap out of the way.”

It’s not too far from the truth, to be honest. You really threw yourself into getting the decorations right. You were all over the ironic implications of this gooey, Hallmark crap, and you worked harder than you ever had before to get the ironic tones just right. This was your goddamned masterfully-laid trap, and your prey was a slippery, ironic creature. Even if you gave it your best, your odds of being cool enough to pull this off were slim. The idea had seemed perfect when you’d first conceived it, but somewhere in the process of creation you lost faith. It was too late to back out, but you knew Bro was going to be able to see right through you.

And, god, he had so easily. You are embarrassed by this memory. Abso-fucking-lutely ashamed. But it’d worked, and you could live with that. You just couldn’t live with anybody having even the slightest clue of what had gone on that night. This was between you and Bro, and that’s the way you want to keep it.

Out of nowhere, Sollux starts blushing under his 3D goggles.

“Uh, I’m juth going to go back to my hive,” he mumbles.

He really doesn’t want to stick around, for some reason, that much is obvious in the way he beelines for the door that usually connects your two bubbles. It’s fairly unusual behavior, even by monster-dork standards. It catches your interest.

“What, is there a bucket lying around somewhere threatening your chastity?” you needle.

You’ve basically immunized him against bucket jokes. It was an obvious weakness you couldn’t help but poking at until it scabbed over. But he still finds your mention of them pretty inappropriate.

He flips you what you’ve come to understand is an obscene troll gesture over his shoulder as he throws open your apartment’s front door. You follow him into his bedroom, mostly because you’d rather not be in your own hive at the moment.

“Come on, dude. You know we’ve got to be up front and personal about this cultural exchange deal.”

He tries to shut the door, but it swings inward and you easily overpower the scrawny nerd. He falls flat on his ass. Looks like you misjudged his resistance a fair bit. He could shove you back out with psionics if he really wanted to. You both know it, but he chooses not to.

“We need to hash these things out like men before they become a problem. You don’t want to have a repeat of the grub incident, do you?” you push as you help him to his feet.

“It’th nothing. Really. I juth thought you’d want me out of your hair while you were dealing with that.”

He gestures vaguely to your house and you can’t help but to tense.

“Dealing with what?”

“You know…”

Sollux decides to stare at his mismatched shoes instead of you. It is in this moment that you realize your roommate is hiding something from you.

 **== > D4V3: 1NT3RROG4T3 TH3 SUSP3CT!**

You put on a little pressure, playing ignorant and pushing your cards until monster-dork finally caves.

“Look, I know it’th perthonal for you, tho I thought I’d give you thpace. But if you’d rather hang out over here, that’th OK too.”

“Personal,” you echo.

“Ithn’t it?” he asks, uncertain in the face of your reaction.

“Is what personal, Sollux?”

“You know, that thuff with your custodian.”

“What stuff with my custodian?” you ask, a little sharper. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what you think you’re talking about. Let’s just lay our cards out where we can see them.”

“Do you theirouthly want to do thith?”

It’s hard to tell when neither of you have pupils, but you think he’s rolling his eyes at you.

“You’re claiming to know the deep, dark secrets of my teenage girl’s heart. So, fess up, dude. Have you been reading my secret diary? And here I’ve been wearing the key around my neck all this time in hopes of keeping you at bay. I should have known better. Should I just give you the key to my chastity belt now and save us both the trouble?”

“There’th no reathon to flip your thit about thith.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong. I’m pretty sure I’ve got every reason to flip my shit about this. How the fuck do you know about…” You can’t bring yourself to say anything incriminating. You still can’t believe he could really know the details of that day. “Valentine’s Day. Your species doesn’t even believe in love.”

“Yeth we do. We jutht have two kindth of love. Hate ith a—”

“Form of love. Yeah, sure, spare me the quadrant lecture. That is not what we’re talking about right now. What do you think you know about my memories?”

He shrugs, like he can’t believe what a big deal you’re making out of this. Maybe he actually can’t.

“Everything.”

“What?”

You’re starting to sound like a broken record. You prefer to think of it as a scratched record.

“I’ve theen your whole life, remember?”

“No, I don’t fucking remember. When did this happen? Was there some kind of afterlife memo I missed?”

“Not here, back in the Veil. Theriouthly, how did you forget thith? We watched you every thep of the way. Look.”

He walks over to his computer and pulls up Trollian. The pesterbox (or in this case, you should probably say trollbox) conversation you had yesterday is still open. He shuts that window and pulls up another with four arrows, one blue, one purple, one red, and one green. It doesn’t take you long to make the connection. He clicks a point on the red line and hits F2.

And suddenly there you are on Sollux’s computer. A movie of you plays on his screen, complete with sound. You’re in the LOHACSE, making a goddamned killing in between pestering Terezi and depriving John of his measly Boonbuck.

It’s interesting to finally see things from a troll’s perspective, but you really don’t give a shit.

“I already knew you guys could see us in the game. That’s not what I asked.”

Sollux shakes his head the way he always does when he tries to explain something, usually how Alternian computers work, and you stubbornly fail to get it.

“Not jutht in the game. We had acceth to your whole timeline.”

He scrolls down to the very bottom of your red arrow and clicks again, opening a new documentary of your life, this time as a little coolkid.

“We could thee everything. I thought you knew.”

“We as in all of you. Every player in your session.”

It’s not really a question.

“Technically, yeth. Motht of us really didn’t give a thit, though. I didn’t either until you wired TZ all thothe Boonbondth.”

You really don’t want to care about what’s happening on Sollux’s screen, but you can’t stop yourself.

“Why the fuck am I sitting on a dead horse?”

He shrugs.

“I never claimed to underthand your human cuthtomth. I jutht watched them.”

You take control of his mouse and scroll through your timeline. There is shit here you don’t even remember. Every minute detail of your life is recorded here for any alien asshole to sit down with a super-sized bucket of popcorn and watch as their Saturday night entertainment.

“So you, what, study this in your spare time? That’s how you know about what happened?”

“I haven’t looked at it thince I died. I jutht remembered.”

“Of course you did. Was that scene a personal favorite of yours? How many times did you watch it?”

“It’th not like that. Would you thop jumping to concluthionth and lithten to me for a thecond? I only looked at your timeline for, like, two minuteth before TZ threw me off of my own computer. I jutht happened to thee that before thee did. The only other time I even acknowledged your eskthithtance was when TZ and KK got into an argument over you.”

“You’re seriously trying to bullshit me into believing that in the two minutes you supposedly looked at my timeline you managed to memorize all this?”

You go out of your way to put your finger on his computer screen because you know it pisses him off.

The Bubble-verse isn’t reality, it’s reality as you remember it. The decorations back in your apartment are probably vague imitations of the original, the details having long since been smoothed out of your memory. The metric ton of information on you logged in Sollux’s computer is not something he could have picked up on in two minutes. Monster-dork is lying to your face.

He shrugs again. It really pisses you off.

“I’ve got a good memory.”

“You’re a shitty liar.”

“It’th not a lie. Jeguth, calm down. You’re worthe than KK.”

You’re not sure if it’s the breach of privacy or being compared to Karkat Vantas that finally sends you over the edge, but within the next second you’ve grabbed Sollux and thrown him against the wall. You barely stop yourself from punching him by slamming your fist into the wall by his head. The two of you have been roommates for more days and weeks than you can even keep track of, but this is the only time you’ve ever wanted so badly to hurt this smug douche.

“What’th your problem?”

“You want to start telling the truth now?” you ask.

You expect him to cave. He doesn’t. He shoves you back with added psychic force.

“I am telling the truth, you inthufferable prick!”

He’s never used his mind-powers against you. Not since the first time you met and he thought you were some kind of mutant animal. In fact, you’ve never had an argument that came to blows before. You’ve been sick of each other frequently, but one of you has always retreated back to your respective side before you did something stupid. You’re far past stupid right now.

You’re already at war with your subconscious, why not be at war with the whole world?

You’re up to your feet and in his face faster than he can bare his stupid, mutant teeth at you. You try to hold back. You tell yourself how uncool it is to just fly off the handle like this. You really are acting like Karkat.

No. Fuck that. Karkat never had half the reasons you did. He deserves this, and you’re going to make him pay.

 **== > Dave: MAKE HIM PAY MAKE HIM PAY MAKE HIM PAY MAKE HIM PAY**


	3. Chapter 3

**== > Days in the future, but not many…**

Your name is Dave Strider, and you have finally stopped FLIPPING YOUR SHIT. You think it might be time that you forgave your TROLL BUDDY. You think you might also have to ASK FOR FORGIVENESS in return, because you are not a complete douche even though you can put on a good act.

For the past several days, you have been feeling PROGRESSIVLY WORSE about your actions. Once the sheer rage faded, you accepted that monster-dork really was trying to be culturally sensitive, in his own bumbling, incredibly dorky way. You still think that his story about TZ and the two minutes he saw your timeline were COMPLETE BULLSHIT, but you’re willing to believe that it was WELL-INTENTIONED BULLSHIT instead of malicious bullshit.

You have not seen SOLLUX since the fight. This was probably FOR THE BEST, but it leaves you uncertain about what you’ll find when you finally cross the threshold into your roommate’s afterlife. Your roommate can be kind of MOODY, and you’ve given him plenty of reasons to be upset. It will probably take all of your COOLKID SKILLS to smooth this one over.

What will you do?

 **== > Dave: Take the Valentines’ Decorations and some Frank Sinatra and serenade the troll boy with the aid of your trusty turntables.**

There is no way you’re going to do that. That is just completely ridiculous. But you will consider serenading someone with a Dave Sinatra mix at some later point for ironic purposes. (Damn, that would have been a great addition to the trap you laid for Bro.)

Besides, it is impossible for you to comply with that request. You destroyed most of the Valentines’ Decorations after your fight with Sollux. The petals were vacuumed, the candles chunked out the window, the floral arrangements trashed, and the balloons decimated. There is nothing left for you to present as a peace offering to your roommate.

No, what you are going to do is man up and face this. Like a man.

 **== > Dave: Enter hive.**

When you and Sollux are trying to keep a distance from one another, your homes become significantly larger than they normally are. When the two of you are feeling particularly united by the wonders of broship, your bedroom door often opens up to his. On normal days, your apartment’s front door opens to the floor under his bedroom.

When you open your apartment door today, it reveals your apartment’s hallway. This isn’t surprising by any means, and this is not the first time this has happened. You head to the elevator and push the down button. It doesn’t matter which call button you push or that there are no other floors in your Bubble-verse apartment, the elevator always takes several minutes to arrive.

The doors finally open and you step into the elevator. On the opposite wall, where the service doors should be, you find the green door to Sollux’s hive. It is exactly where you expected it to be.

What you do not expect is to open the door and find yourself in Sollux’s bedroom. This throws you only momentarily. You decide to take it as a sign that your roommate is feeling more magnanimous than you have been for the past couple of days.

You find Sollux kneeling on his bedroom floor. You are about to launch into the carefully-planed-out apology rap you composed just for him when all ability to speak leaves you.

There is someone else in Sollux’s hive.

The boy sitting across from Sollux flickers like a bad television signal, and you realize that you were wrong. There is no one else here but the two of you.

“Is that some kind of troll hologram?” you ask, unintentionally keeping your voice down as if you believe the sound might further disrupt the image.

“It’th a memory,” he explains, not moving. “You do it too. Only I don’t think you realithe you’re doing it.”

You walk over and kneel down beside Sollux to get a better view. The image wavers more as you move. You assume it is because you’re breaking Sollux’s concentration. It steadies out the longer you keep still.

The image is of a troll boy you’ve never seen before. He’s short, stocky, and looks around Sollux’s age, but it’s hard to tell with trolls. His hair’s a mess and almost longer than his tiny, rounded horns. The most striking detail of the troll boy is his huge, genuine smile. It’s so sugar-sweet that even the black lips and shark teeth fail to make it anything other than adorable.

“Is this an important memory?”

Sollux nods slowly. You weren’t going to pry, but he offers the information up on his own.

“Thith ith Karkat Vantath. You probably know him ath carthinoGenetithith. Typed in all capth, grey texth.”

“Holy shit,” you say, because there is no way that the image before you is of Karkat Vantas.

You always assumed that guy was incapable of smiling. Not that you had any real evidence to support that, but come on. There’s just no way a guy who takes himself that seriously could smile like this. This is Egbert-level sweetness. No, this is stronger than Jade and Egbert’s combined levels of derp-adorableness.

“So, was the asshole show just an act he put on for us?”

“No. He’th pretty much an inthufferable fuckasth all the time,” Sollux says with a little smile. “That’th why thith memory ith thpecial.”

“Oh.”

You suddenly understand. This is Sollux’s apology.

“I have a perfetht memory-thell mutathion. If I thee thomething even onthe, I remember it. Every detail. I can’t help it.”

The image shifts and Karkat’s smile focuses down to a pink grub growing on Sollux’s floor. Unlike Karkat, the grub is real. You notice an iridescent sheen on his skin that you know isn’t explained by troll anatomy. It’s reminiscent of the surface of a bubble. You wonder if the Bubble-verse will ever cease to surprise you.

“Thith happened during our thethion. We had more time than you did. We wathted a lot of it on thuff like thith. Onthe he figured out that the goal of the game wath to create a new univerthe, he athked me to help him dig up all hith favorite movieth. He hath thith theriouth weakneth for romcomth. He thaid that no univerthe he created would be worth living in without them.”

Sollux reaches forward and rests his fingers on the grub, only a hair’s breadth away from Karkat’s.

“For all my troubleth, I got that thmile for half a thecond and the acknowledgement that I wathn’t completely uthleth before he went back to yelling at me.”

He shifts his hand forward another inch and Karkat disappears completely. The look on Sollux’s face is more raw and real and undeniably human for all that it is subtle.

“So, you guys were…”

He doesn’t give you a chance to make an ironic euphemism.

“No. We were juth friendth. I mean, I think I uthed to pity him pretty hard, but at the thame time he wath tho rediculouthly thelf-thuficient that it almoth felt like he didn’t need anyone to pity him. He’th good at puthing otherth away. And there were alwayth thothe around who were eathier to pity.”

He leans back, relaxing his weight on his palms to look at you, like he’s somehow completely comfortable with the exact thing that sent you flipping your shit days ago.

“The human who lived with you, he wath like your matethprite and your luthuth all at onthe, wathn’t he?”

“Thanks, dude. Way to suggest I’m into beastiality,” you joke, because it’s the only way you know how to deal with the situation.

“What? No. Thop intentionally making thith difficult. I’m jutht thaying I know he raithed you and I know you had fluthed feelingth for him. I juth don’t underthand why that maketh you tho upthet. Ith it becauthe he’th dead?”

Your heart still experiences a stupid twinge of panic. You can’t really control it. You already knew he knew, so why are you still freaking out?

You know you’ve got to fess up. So just do it already.

“That’s part of it.”

You wonder how to start explaining the incestuous relationship you had with your only living relative, knowing that you can’t chicken out and smooth talk your way through this. After what he just told you, it would make you the biggest asshole in the universe.

“But it’s also because he was my brother, and humans aren’t supposed to work like that.”

“You mean becauthe he’th a guy? I heard that wath pretty thrange by human thandardth.”

“No. I mean, yeah, that’s pretty weird by human standards, but the fact that he was my brother was more than weird, it was straight up wrong. Hell, it probably could have gotten us killed where we lived.”

“It’th like a mutathion,” Sollux says with this look like there’s a little light bulb going off in his head.

“You could look at it like that,” you say. “And it’s more than just the fact that it wasn’t supposed to happen. I think the thing that pisses me off the most is that now it _can’t_ happen. I don’t know how much you saw, but we never really, uh…”

“He wanted to wait until you were older. I remember.”

“Shit, dude.”

“Thorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m just being bitchy,” you run a hand through your hair and then settle back on your hands, mimicking his pose. You want to be as relaxed as he is. You’re dead. It really doesn’t matter anymore. “The worst part is that I couldn’t do anything to save him. And I was the fucking knight of time. I brought John back from the dead, so why couldn’t I save the one person who really…”

You’re getting too emotional. You’ve got to reel this shit back in.

“This is probably going to sound hella dramatic, but it sort of feels like we were doomed from the start, you know?”

“That’th what my dead girlfriend uthed to thay to comfort me after I killed her.”

“Wait, what?”

“I uthed to date Aradia.”

“As in the afterlife chick who keeps popping in to check on us?”

“Yeth. Ith it really that hard to believe?”

“That you dated her or that you killed her?”

“I don’t know what the ever thaw in me.”

“No, dude, that was a joke. The shocking part of that statement is not that you used to date the afterlife chick. Jegus, you trolls are fucked up.”

“It’th not like I meant to kill her. It wath really out of my control.”

“Maybe you should back this story up and start at the beginning.”

 **== > Skip to the end.**


	4. Chapter 4

**== > Minutes in the future, but not many…**

“…but then the became a robot at one point, I gueth? I wath already dead when that happened. I mean, thith me. There wath thill the other me… But it’th OK becauthe the’th alive now, thomehow.”

“OK, jegus, dude. Remind me never to feel sorry for myself again. That is the saddest story I have ever heard. Look at me. I’m getting weepy over here.”

Sollux gives you a toothy grin.

“Are you declaring your pity for me, Dave?”

“You wish. It’d probably make you feel better about the ten different kinds of pitiful you think I am after witnessing all my crap.”

“Maybe it’th platonic pity. We can acthually do that, you know. It’th not all thethual.”

“You couldn’t be platonic for me if you tried.”

“You wouldn’t want me to be if I could.”

You laugh and let Sollux take the victory. You’re almost proud of how quick he reverses your ironic statements these days, because obviously it’s all thanks to the pro sparring partner he has.

“What? Thath it? You’re giving up that eathily? Maybe you really do pity me.”

“Hey, hey, who said anything about giving up? Maybe I’m just going easy on you because I feel so bad for you. Did you ever think about that?”

“I thought Thriderth didn’t pull their puncheth.”

“Touché. Alright, you got me. I surrender. This is me, officially throwing the towel in. You see this? You better be taking pictures, because this doesn’t happen every day.”

You mime throwing in the towel and he laughs.

“That ith the thittietht thruender I have ever theen. Come on, I know you can do better than that. Grovel properly for me.”

You quirk an eyebrow.

“Was that a challenge I just heard issue from those pretty black lips?”

“Think you can bring the heat?”

“I’m insulted at how little faith you have in me.”

“Come on, coolkid. Thow me what you’ve got.”

You kneel down in front of him, all ready to beg and shit, when you realize that you’re down on _one_ knee and you could do a hell of a lot better than some simple begging.

“No, wait, I’ve got a better idea. You just rest your sweet cheeks right there for a moment and let me go grab a prop.”

“I never knew thurrendering wath tho complex.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll like it,” you say, flashing him a grin before dashing back to your apartment. The trip back is a lot shorter than your earlier trip. His door opens to your apartment’s living room. Good. Status quo restored.

You’re back down kneeling in front of Sollux in a flash, a flashstep flash.

“If you’d given me a little more warning, I would’ve prepared something real nice for you. But as it stands, I guess you’ll just have to settle for these impromptu and imprecise words of mine.”

“Dave, what the fuck ith thith?” he asks as you hand him the one decoration remaining from your Valentine’s Day Massacre: a giant, heart-shaped box full of chocolates. Well, almost full. You may have picked out some of the more shitty ones over the past couple of days. But, really, that just improves its ironic value.

“Just sit back and watch, monster-bro.”

You clear your throat and launch into a ridiculously ironic Dave Sinatra rap.

“ _Monster-dork, what are you doin’?  
Turnin’ my afterlife to ruin  
Listen close, ‘cause I’m not fakin’  
Darlin’-dork, I’m yours for the takin’  
I’ll even dress it up in red and blue  
‘Cause, baby, I’m surrendering to you.”_

“I thought thith wath thurender, not theducthion.”

“Eh, with humans it’s basically the same thing.”

 “You are thuch a dork.”

You punch him in the arm, but he just laughs. And, gog, this guy. This fucking troll. Before you even think about it, you’ve shut up those snickers with a kiss.

For one blissful second, it’s amazing. Then you remember all the shit that brought you here and you feel seven different kinds of awkward. You make the mistake of opening your eyes and meeting his, and even through both your lenses the look he’s giving you reminds you in the worst way just how much he knows. You want to tear open his skull to figure out how he sees you now. How he always saw you, you guess.

“We really are methed up, aren’t we?” he says as you pull back.

“You sure it’s not just me?”

The question was supposed to be a joke, but that’s not how it comes out.

“It’th OK.”

“It’s not,” you say, because now that the subject’s broached again you’ve got to ride it out to the end. “You don’t get it. I got the memo. Trolls don’t really give a shit about incest, right?”

Your tongue flips out last second and almost refuses to say the word, but you override the feeling and keep your cool.

“Not really. It’th not like we could ever figure out where our genetic material came from anyway. The only thing clothe to relativeth we have would be a troll with the thame exact wriggling day ath you, but it’th more of an interething cointhidenthe than a cauthe for conthern.”

“Yeah, well if you’re human, it’s incredibly fucked up. It’s something you’re not supposed to do. It’s something you’re not even supposed to _want_ to do,” you try to explain. “I don’t know how to give you a decent understanding of just how fucked up it is without a cultural equivalent.”

“Tho don’t try.”

“You brought it up.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Fuck, he’s right, you realize, and it’s killing you. Fuck right and wrong, the guilt never ate at you like this before. It’s different now that somebody knows. It’s different sitting here knowing that a hundred eyes sunken in grey skin were watching you at your best and your worst and your most raw. You can’t deal with that.

“You’re kind of like KK. Alwayth flipping your thit and getting bent out of thape trying to hide when nobody really giveth a fuck.”

You are getting real sick of being compared to Karkat Vantas.

“I think you would have made a pretty good troll. And KK would have probably made a better human than a troll. He talkth big, but I don’t think he’th ever really wanted to hurt anyone.”

“I’m not sure whether to be insulted or complimented by this.”

“I’m juth thaying that maybe you thould thop worrying because by my culture’th thandardth you’re perfectly normal. It’th like KK trying to hide is blood color from you guyth. It’th thupid. I don’t care, Dave. Tho… take advantage already.”

“Nah, I couldn’t do that. Knights can’t go around taking advantages of princesses. That shit is downright unchivalrous.”

“I’m not your fucking printheth, you inthufferable prick.”

An invisible force pushes you down, pinning your arms to the ground. It’s startlingly gentle for a power you’ve seen level buildings. Sollux sets the chocolates over to the side to crawl on top of you.

“Feisty,” you smirk, trying to ignore the way your stomach feels like it’s throwing a rave for ice cubes and Altoids. “Just how I like my princesses.”

“Thut up and let me take advantage of you, Thrider.”

You comply, but only because he gives your mouth something better to do than talk. It amazes you every single time, but monster-dork is actually a pretty good kisser. Even if you’re having trouble letting go of all these bullshit shenanigans, you can still find room in your messed up head to appreciate his effort on a physical level. And he’s pretty good at maneuvering around your shades and his 3D goggles. There are still some awkward moments when lens strikes lens. It’s not like it was with Bro. You’ll probably never stop comparing him to Bro, but none of this would be fucking bothering you right now if it weren’t for the fact that he _knows._ He knows you’re comparing him to Bro, and that simple fact won’t stop eating away at you.

“Thop thinking,” he orders.

“Why don’t you fucking make me? Come on, monster-dork. You want to be in charge of this show, you better put on a good performance.”

He slides his hands under your shirt and the pressure pinning your arms slips underneath you. You panic for a second as you feel the ground slip away, leaving your weight precariously suspended on psionic tendrils, but you manage to keep a lid on it. You disguise your instinctual flailing by grabbing his bony ass, but you catch him smirking at you anyway. God, this bastard knows you too well.

You have to let go almost as soon as you grab him so he can finish pulling your shirt off. Once your hands find their way back to him, you return the favor, tossing his sacred sign bullshit tee down to the ground after yours.

“Moving fast, aren’t you? I was kind of hoping you’d take me out to dinner first.”

This isn’t the first time that sloppy makeouts have inched into shirtless territory, but the makeouts themselves are still a relatively new thing in this corner of the Bubbleverse. This feels pretty damn serious, like the two of you have got a one-way ticket to “where doing this, man” –ville on a runaway freight train. Not that it bothers you. Come on. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, and Striders gotta get their mack on. You just weren’t aware that monster-dork had a wild-side that didn’t involve typing non-stop on his computer while talking to himself in what you’ve come to determine is a language based entirely on double-binary code. 

“I’m thorry, I thought I wath thuppothed to be putting on a good preformanthe.”

“Smart ass.”

“If that’th not doing it for you, I can alwayth try a little harder.”

Massive and incredibly sharp buck-fangs scrape down across your collarbone just hard enough to threaten pain before his tongue sweeps back over the abrasion. You wonder if he tastes blood. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s gone just a little too far with those chompers of his. It wouldn’t be the first time you liked it too much to tell him to stop, either.

He slides down, his legs twining with yours and his thigh ghosting pressure across the one place he’s never been. His head travels farther down your chest, easing up on the teeth and getting in more lip and tongue action, which you’re incredibly grateful for when he reaches your nipple. Hands slide up your back and scratch down, and you can feel every single point on his jagged, bitten nails. You arch up against him just because it’s so easy to. Sollux’s psi-bullshit adjusts with you, taking your weight evenly as you move. There’s no solid ground underneath you and no tug of gravity to remind you to keep this shit under control.

He laughs silently into your chest. You can fucking feel it. Hell no. That’s not how this is going to go down.

Trolls don’t have nipples, or even belly buttons. They’ve got these little bumps going down their side like blisters or calluses that he explained once were from where he used to have all these extra legs when he was a baby bug. It’s really not sexy at all to think about, but the good news is you don’t have to. According to Sollux, they’re basically masses of unfeeling scar tissue anyway. You ignore them and run your hands up his arms, across his shoulders, and into his hair. You wonder if he’s going to stop you. He’s only let you do this once before, and only then after you practically begged him. But you reach the base of his horns without any signs of protest.

He moans aloud as you work up a rhythm, gently scratching and kneading the skin right at the base of his horns. His mouth pulls away from your chest and he rocks his head up against your hand, like the feeling is so fucking good he can’t do anything but submit to the pleasure. For all you know, maybe it is. You don’t mind too awful much. Just listening to him and knowing that you’re the one causing those sounds does more for you than his mouth did.

It’s after you coax out one particularly blood pusher-felt moan that he starts lisping at you to stop. But you can’t say you feel like you’re in an obliging mood at the moment.

“Theriouthly, cut it out.”

You pull your hand back an inch and he follows you, just like you knew he would. You’ve never had a cat, but you’re starting to get the impression that dating Sollux isn’t all that different from owning one. Jegus, you’re dating a catboy. Life does not get more moe than this.

“You sure you want me to stop? Getting mixed signals here, monster-bro.”

Psionics force your hand away. You take a hint and back off a bit, feeling equal parts smug in victory and pissed he’s pulling the plug already.

“My thow,” he reminds you. “My ruleth.”

“Mind cluing me in as to where this showboat is headed to, captain?”

“I figured it wath obviouth.”

A hand snakes down between your legs and before you can think to stop him, monster-bro’s got his hand around your dick. Or as much of it as he can paw at through your jeans. Shit, when did you get this hard? Must have been sometime during that bit when you were drooling over his sexy catboy act. Woops.

“Thith meanth we’re headed in the right direthion, doethn’t it?”

“OK. Wow. Somebody’s definitely eager to get in my pants.”

“Are you complaining?” he asks, and the look he gives you over his shades has you thinking for just an instant that you may have said the wrong thing. Then he opens his mouth again. “If that train wreck of a theducthive thurrender was juth your average Thrider bullthit, then I’ve got no problem backing thith up tho you can do it again properly.”

“Oh, hell no. We’re doing this, man. We’re making this happen right the fuck now, even if you insist on orchestrating the entire thing like we’re historically accurate dogfight re-enactors. Hell, you can slap me in a uniform and call me the Red Baron, just so long as we keep this show on the road.”

You’re rambling. You’ve got to get a lid on your shit before this whole thing goes up in flames. But, jegus, it’s not exactly like you’ve had a lot of practice keeping your cool with another dude’s hand on your dick.

“I have no idea what the fuck you juth thaid.”

“Me either.”

“Tho, can you maybe juth shut the fuck up and let me pail you?”

“Not so fast, sweetcheeks. We’ve still got to show-and-tell.”

“What the fuck ith thow-and-tell?”

You finally return the favor and grab a handful of his junk. Sollux jumps, leading to a sudden increase of pressure on your sensitive man-bits that’s thankfully more pleasurable than painful. He doesn’t so much as gasp, but you swear to god he’s holding his breath.

The only problem now is you’re not sure what you’re manhandling, but it’s definitely not a gray but otherwise human cock. You don’t really feel much of anything where his dick should be. But at the same time, he definitely doesn’t feel like a chick should. Not that you’re an expert in human female anatomy either, but you’ve seen enough pop-up porn ads to know that chicks are supposed to be generally sort of… well, smooth. Sollux isn’t smooth. He isn’t soft, either. “Mutant Ken Doll” is the first horrible analogy to come to mind. You shove the image away out of sheer and total fear that it’s actually what you’re going to find when you slip him out of his jeans.

You press in a little closer, trying to cop a better feel and put your fears at rest. The shapes under the palm of your hand make absolutely no fucking sense to you, but when your fingers slip farther back they come into contact with sticky, wet fabric. You feel back in familiar territory.

Sollux makes a small noise you don’t know how to classify because it’s not quite human. Pisonics force your hand back down to your chest. You’d wonder if you went a little too far too fast, but you’re too busy feeling oddly turned on by the thought that you’re making your best alien bro leak ‘cause you’ve got him so hot.

“Show-and-tell,” you reiterate. “You show, you tell. School me in troll anatomy. I’m getting a sudden hankering to learn exactly how to use a bucket.”

“You firtht.”

“Nope. I’m thinking you first. You’re the fearless leader here, now lead.”

You’ve just gotten the tips of your fingers down the front of his pants when he forces you back with cheating psychic bullshit. You are not happy to find yourself suddenly immobile, hands again pinned above your head and floating a lot closer to the ceiling than you thought you were.

“Cheap shot, bro. I am calling unfair tactics on this bullshit.”

“I’d thay thorry, but I think I kind of like you bound and bitchy.”

“Jegus, I should have known you’d be a kinky little bastard. Go on, man. Rip my pants off with your bare teeth. Not like I can stop you.”

“Hehehe. I gueth you really can’t like thith.”

He sits back between your legs, his ass no doubt suspended by the same game-breaking psionics you are, and scratches at the skin right above your beltline. No doubt just taking a moment to admire the view, the rotten son of a bitch. You are really damn uncomfortable at this point in time, and you shift ( _shift,_ not squirm) in your bullshit psychic bonds. This is really not where you expected or wanted this to go, but the worst part isn’t the way monster-dork’s eating up your fine figure. The worst part is that the way he’s looking at you (and, god, as much as you hate to admit it, being completely unable to do _anything_ about it) is definitely doing something for you.

You really for the life of you cannot think of a single thing to say, which might have something to do with the way all the blood in your body suddenly decided to rush to either end of your body, half to your dick and half to your face.

“Guetht thith meanth there’th nothing you can do if I decide to do _thith_.”

Sollux flicks the fingers of one hand vaguely towards your head and your shades lift right off your face.

“Hey!” you snap before you can control the impulse. “Careful with those. They’re authentic.”

“Don’t be thuch a wriggler, I’m not going to eat them.”

His 3D glasses join your shades and float out of view.

“There. Thafe and thound.”

“You didn’t put them on the floor, did you? Last thing I want is to let you drip your sweet alien sex liquids all over them.”

“Fuck, would you thut up about your damn glatheth already! I put them down by my computer. Happy?”

“As happy as I can be, given that I’m about to have my innocence stolen by a psychic cheater.”

“I’m beginning to rethink my earlier pothition. A gag would definitely be an improvement.”

“But if you gag me, how am I supposed to show-and-tell, baby?”

“Then letth hurry up and get that part over with tho it won’t be a problem.”

You cannot argue with a hand on your pants. It is simply beyond your capabilities.

Sollux has no issue unbuttoning your pants and tossing them to the ground with a little psionic help. He’s even careful with your dick, which you’re incredibly grateful for given that he doesn’t have one of his own.  Your suits boxers give him pause though.

“Monster-dork, they’re just symbols.”

“I know. I’ve alwayth been meaning to athk why you wear two pairth of panth. Ith it an irony thing?”

“What? Oh fuck, don’t tell me trolls go commando 24/7. You honestly have no idea what underwear is?”

“Ith thith ethplanathion vital at all to human thexth? Becauthe if not, I’d really rather be learning about that.”

“Nope, it’s really fucking not.”

“Good.”

Your boxers join your pants down far, far below, and your manmeat is prime and exposed for some alien ogling. You are starting to feel uncomfortable again. And also painfully neglected. You need to get this ball rolling, asap.

“Still in, or has my glorious spam porpoise scared you off?”

His fingers reach forward and tentatively wrap around you, barely touching and definitely not enough.

“Thith ith how I’m thuppothed to do it, right? How much prethure thould I be applying?”

“Firm, but don’t pinch it off. It’s sensitive,” you instruct. “A little tighter… Fuck, yeah, that’s about right.”

“Ith it OK if I move now? That’th the netht thep, right?”

“Knock yourself out, man,” you readily agree, but then a thought cuts through the haze of endorphins or whatever the fuck’s going on in your brain at this moment. “Wait, steps? Who the fuck gave you steps on jerking me off?”

“I may have done a little rethearch of my own.”

“Did you go searching my internet for human sex tips?”

“I didn’t have to. You had a pretty good thet of inthructhional videoth thitting unprotected on your harddrive. I uthed thothe.”

“You did not fucking hack my computer to get your grubby little fingers in my porn stash.”

The grin on his face is nothing short of completely self-satisfied, with the slightest hint of sadism.

“You put horrible-thmelling bubble-making fluidth into my recuperacoon. I asthumed nothing wath thacred.”

“Goddamn, monster-dork. You are the only guy I know who could be that smug about watching another man’s porn,” you say. Now that you’re over the initial shock, you’re actually kind of impressed. “Guess I don’t have to worry about show-and-tell.”

“Not unleth I thart fucking thomthing up. Bet you want me to go now, huh?”

“From where I’m standing, by which I mean ‘from where I’m tied up by lousy stupid goddamn cheating psionics’, letting me get a look at what you’re packing is the very least you could do.”

“Hehe, being tied up like thith really pitheth you off, doethn’t it?”

He drops your dick to run his fingers teasingly across every other inch of skin available to him, no doubt knowing well in advance how it would make you writhe.

“And here I was trying so hard to hide my feelings. Come on, dude. Let me get my hands back on you. Promise you won’t regret it.”

“Thill my thow, Thrider. You juth thit back and watch.”

And so you sit back and watch (not like you really have a lot of options) as Sollux goes for the big reveal. His hands are unsteady on the buttons of his pants. It’s hard to tell from your current angle, but you think he has to rely on the mumbo-jumbo to actually undo the fasteners, his hands are shaking that hard. You’d laugh, but you can’t bring yourself to focus on anything but the truly unbelievable experience of your very first eyeful of troll junk.

Sollux does not look like a girl. For one thing, he’s completely hairless. For another, he’s got this… sort of lump thing going on which you guess is what you’ve been mistaking for alien dick all those times you snuck a peak. And a little further down…

“Dude, what the fuck is that?”

There is definitely something moving between his legs. What the actual fuck?

“Uh…”

He looks down, like he actually has to in order to guess what you’re talking about, and his terrifying hentai animu bits retreat back inside of him. You mentally reiterate a massive “what the fuck”.

“Fuck, OK. So, uh… Bone bulge,” he points to the hairless lump, “nook, which I athume is comparable to a human ‘puthy’ only I thwear if you even think of trying to thove that mathive monthrosity you have hanging between your legth into it I will rip your nutthack off, underthand? Tab A will not fucking fit into thlot B.”

“Understood,” you immediately parrot. You are admittedly a bit disappointed, but you get over it once you remember what you’re pretty damn sure is a retractable tentadick he still has yet to show or tell. “What about fingers?”

You waggle yours. It’s just about the only motion you’re capable of. You definitely catch the way his eyes fixate on your fingertips. Oh yes, you are going to make this happen. There’s no such thing as incompatible here.

“I gueth that could work,” he says slowly, his eyes back down on his own gray anatomy. He is so thinking about it. You think you catch another flicker of movement between his legs.

“OK, what’s going on there? Explain now,” you demand, impatient.

God, if you weren’t fucking immobile you wouldn’t have to sit around waiting for him to gather his metaphorical balls. You would be exploring the shit out of him. One hand up his sexy alien snatch, the other getting acquainted with whatever the fuck he’s got hiding in his bone bulge. Goddamn it, why isn’t this already happening?

“You mean here?” he asks, his fingers slipping down and slightly into the bottom of his bone bulge. When he pulls his hand back, a string of something clear and wet stretches between his body and his fingertips. Oh fuck, what you got your fingers into earlier wasn’t coming from his nook, was it?

“Unless you’ve got anything else you want to show me, I think that’s next on the list, monster-bro.”

“That would be my bulge. My bulges,” he says, his voice sounding tense. Apparently talking about nooks and pussy is completely OK, but just saying the word ‘bulge’ means a trip to the Land of Hesitation and Awkwardness. You wonder if trolls and their weird cultural bullshit will ever cease to amaze you. You doubt it.

“Bulges as in how many?” you ask, wondering if you’re about to have sex with a crotch-octopus. Goddamn, if he’s got like a million little tentacles down there this is going to be so fucking weird. Maybe a bit hot, but still so fucking weird.

“Two.”

“Of course there are two. Let me guess, one red and one blue?”

You are honestly not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.

“I am tho fucking glad my anatomy amutheth you.”

If the glare Sollux is giving you is anything to go by, you should probably feel bad for teasing your bubblemate about his tentadicks. But at the moment it is honestly beyond you. This shit is just too fucking surreal. You do put apologizing to him on your mental to-do list, however.

“Whip those badboys out. Let me get a look at them. Or better yet, this would be a great opportunity for you to let me go so I can get more than a look.”

The blistering look just won’t let up. You guess maybe you deserve it, but you’ve got a hot, throbbing erection and your muscles are starting to ache from the numerous times you’ve started pulling at your psychic bonds without realizing it.

“Come on, dude. Did you drag me all the way up here just so we could have a naked tea party, or are we going to make this happen?”

“Meaning that my freaky tentacleth haven’t thcared you off yet?”

“You were actually worried about that? How did you hack my computer and manage to miss the entire folder dedicated just to tentacles? I am disappointed in you.”

“No, I thaw it.”

“Then what’s the hold up? Let me get a hold of those sweet, slippery sex toys. You won’t regret it, I promise.”

Sollux hesitates just long enough for you to start wondering what exactly you’re going to have to say to convince him you want a piece of his hot, alien ass before he crawls back up your body, his hands alternatively finding support by jabbing into your fleshy bits and in mid-air. You don’t know why he bothered using you when he could have just used the psionics 100% of the way, but you are pretty sure it had something to do with intentionally pissing you off. Or maybe just shutting you up, if the hand that ended up right in your gut is any indication.

He lays down against you, going for full naked body contact. Which is OK with you. Really damn OK with you. Especially when he lines up his (fuck what was it? bone bulge?) with your erection and grinds down.

His hands find your arms, adding an extra and unneeded level to the massive amounts of bondage already going on, and his mouth finds yours. The next couple of moments blur into a haze of sloppy, naked makeouts, which he quickly convinces you are the best fucking thing since breathing. Better than breathing. Most of the time, anyway. Your brain cells surface from the massive amounts of pleasure for just long enough to wonder if this is anything like what he felt when you had your hands on his horns, then everything fades down to sensory input and one insistent command of _more._ You may or may not be begging aloud.

Somewhere along the lines your hips started bucking up against his. He presses down against you in a way that makes you absolutely fucking moan into his mouth. You’d wonder if it’s just as good for him, but the increasingly smooth slide that you know isn’t coming from you the noise he’s currently making, a low, consistent hum that sounds vaguely like how the mutant offspring of a cat and a grasshopper would purr, has you guessing he’s getting something out of this too. You’ve never heard him make sounds anything like this before.

“Oh, _fuck,”_ you rasp out when you first feel it.

You could be wrong, but you’re pretty damn sure that a tentadick just joined the party. Could even be two you’re feeling. Fuck, yeah, there are definitely two tentacles wrapped around your cock right now.

Sollux has stopped thrusting in favor of burying his head down in your neck and biting. If he draws blood, you’re going to give him hell later. Right now you’re finding it hard to give a shit.

“Fuck, fuck, dude, let me see them. Please, fuck, jesus.”

You cannot even believe the words coming out of your mouth. Jegus, get a tentadick or two wrapped around your cock and you just start vomiting uncool. But you have seriously got to get a look at what’s going on down south. There’s just no two ways about it.

Sollux groans into your shoulder, sounding honestly kind of pissed (does he still not believe that you’re 100% committed to this crazytrain?), but he obligingly sits back, basically straddling your hips, to give you a better view of the show.

Words tumble out of your mouth, but your brain doesn’t process them. You are too busy getting yourself a good eyeful.

You get over the obvious realizations first: there are definitely two tentadicks doing the tango with your man-sausage. They’re sliding and, and fucking _writhing_ across your skin. Generally just going to town on your dick, and god if it doesn’t feel good. They don’t stop moving. Not a single inch of them, not for a single second.

You look a little closer, trying to figure out where one starts and the other ends so you can get a better idea of what exactly this alien troll boy is doing to you. Both tentacles (bulges?) are a dark gray, predictably close to the shade of his skin, but you’ve got an eye for detail. When it comes to objects in the immediate vicinity of your cock, anyway.

One of them is literally red and the other blue. It’s little more than a tint over the gray, but it’s definitely there. Jegus fucking Christ. On further inspection, you notice little splotches of red and blue in the general, purple, gooey mess that is the base of your cock.

Sollux’s hand falls around your dick, tentacles and all. They slip into the gaps between his fingers, making room for him as he slides his thumb up and over your head. You have got to get into the action. This bound and helpless thing just isn’t cutting it anymore. You need to feel those babies sliding across your own fingers, in your mouth, on your tongue. Fuck, isn’t that a thought?

“Sollux, fuck, let me go already!”

You intentionally pull at your bonds hard as you can, wondering if you can break out of them with sheer force. Fuck, he has to be getting at least a little distracted by now, doesn’t he? Then again, maybe that’s not a thing you should be wishing for unless you want to experience a ten foot drop the moment he climaxes.

“But thith ith going tho well, judging from your reacthion. You’re already leaking your genetic material. Why meth with what workth?” he grins, showing off every last one of his pointy monster teeth.

“You little bastard. You’re not seriously planning to keep me like this the whole time?”

“My thow, remember? It’th only appropriate for you to thit back and watch like a helpleth little wriggler.”

“Sollux, you better fucking let me go.”

“Or what, Dave? You’ll pull thome of your thlick coolkid moveth on me? I’d like to thee you try.”

Smug douche. You swear to fucking gog, the moment you get your body back under your control you are going to wipe that goddamn smirk right off his face. Little bastard. You bet that even if you can’t fit your cock up his alien pussy, you can fit it in his ass. You are going to fuck him so hard he won’t be able to breathe, much less pull fucking bullshit psychic party tricks. You are going to—

That line of thought is cut brutally short as the world spins like a top. Your stomach drops straight to the floor, and you swear you hear monster-dork giggle. Your breath catches in your throat, which you’re insanely grateful for because it means you aren’t screaming your head off like your instincts are begging you to. You are pretty sure you can’t hide the look of absolute and utter shock on your face, however. It seems monster-dork has a talent for pulling all sorts of uncool reactions out of you.

You can’t tell how many times you turn through the air, but you end up face down. You now have clear and undeniable evidence that the only thing standing between you and a grubby, wiry floor is one hundred and twenty pounds of grinning, horny dork.

“Little shit.”

“Ready for the main attracthion?”

He crawls back up your body, aiming straight for your neck. You feel like you’re suspended on a rack. You feel like that poor fucker from Indiana Jones, staring down into the pit of fire. _Om Nam Shiva, Om Nam Shiva._ You can feel every ounce of monster-dork’s weight as his arms and legs settle behind you. It strains your arms in their bonds, but not too much. Just enough to make you hyper-aware of the pressure there, the only thing keeping both of you from plummeting to the ground. Christ, since when were his ceilings this high?

You take some comfort in the thought that if you do end up falling, you’ll land right on top of his stupid, grey ass.

He runs his nails down your sides so hard you can feel the way your skin gives under the pressure, denting inward in submission to his fingertips. He grabs your ass and grinds down. Up? The words hardly seem to have any relevance. There is no up. Everything is up. Higher and hotter and faster. You belatedly realize you just let out several pretty uncool sounds. His bulges seem to react to each new noise he forces out of you, winding and writhing, running across your slit and covering every inch of you in turn. His tongue slips across your chest, up your neck. Teeth slide across your jaw. You swear into his mouth. _Bastard. Fucking bastard._ He just smirks back at you and licks your lips.

His hands claw up your back and grab fistfuls of your hair. He pulls your head to the side and runs his tongue up and across the edge of your ear. You hear the words and the arrogant, breathless laugh, but it takes your brain a minute to catch up. Even when it does, you can’t make sense of the words.

“Bet you’re not thinking about it now.”

You try to form words, ask him what the fuck he’s going on about now of all the fucking times, but before you can even recall what English is, you’re gone. So fucking far gone you see nothing but white and oh christ but he just doesn’t let up. He just winds around you tighter and moves faster and god it’s too fucking much but you can’t breathe, much less tell him to stop.

You come down to the feeling of everything descending. Up and down are still unsure, relative terms, but you feel your weight redistribute across his lap. He finally pulls his bulges back into his own personal dick area. You can feel his legs underneath you as your arms release and fall neatly around his neck. About fucking time. You’re too much of a warm, gooey mess inside and out to bother needling him about it again.

Goddamn it, you think you are cuddling monster-dork again. Whatever. You’ll have plenty of time to be cool later. Right now it’s well and fucking beyond you.

“Fuck,” you moan into his shoulder. You are surprised that you are capable of even that small act. “Fuck, fuck, man.”

“Pleathe,” he groans, desperate.

He grabs a hold of your hand and forces it down between you.

“Pleathe.”

You can feel him shaking. His bulges wrap around your palm and wrist and his fingers press you back, dragging a slick line of his own love juice back to what you’re pretty damn sure is his nook. You dart your eyes up to his real quick, just making sure, then slip your middle finger inside him.

He feels nothing like what you expected. What you expected was wet folds of skin stretching and pushing against you. In other words, what you felt on those not-quite-as-rare-as-you’d-like-people-to-believe explorations of your own body. Sollux doesn’t feel like that. He feels smooth, completely smooth, in a way you’re not sure even girls feel. And he doesn’t give an inch. His opening is wide and perfectly concave. Your finger slips easily in, but he gets narrower the further you go in, reminding you vaguely of an inverted funnel. But geometry really isn’t the first thing on your mind at the moment.

“This OK?”

“Nn, fuck. Deeper,” he hisses in your ear.

You do your best to oblige him, but he just keeps begging.

“Hate to break it to you, Sol,” and you really do hate it. Damn it, you just want to fuck this alien boy senseless, but there’s only so much you can do without getting creative with some household objects. “But my finger can only go so far.”

To illustrate the point, you grind your finger in deep enough that your knuckles brush against his outer edges.

And he screams so loud your ears are left ringing.

“Fuck! Thit, thit, thiiiiiiit!”

“Jesus christ, fuck, I’m sorry man.”

You rapid-fire apologies faster than you can pull your finger back out of him, which is honestly saying something. Shit, you think you felt something you really weren’t supposed to in there. Something with texture instead of never-ending smooth.

Sollux grabs either side of your face and drags his head up so you’re eye to eye.

“No,” he pants. “Do that again.”

 _Oh._

“So you’re a screamer,” you laugh out of sheer fucking relief. “Good to know.”

You can from the way he purses his little black lips that he’s about to start bitching at you for being politically incorrect about his freaky fantastic alien sex again, but you don’t give him the opportunity. Part in revenge for the psychic bondage bullshit, part in intense desire to force another scream out of him, you grind your finger back inside him, getting very acquainted with that textured bit you got a feel of earlier.

He doesn’t scream, but he doesn’t disappoint either. You’re glad he pulled your faces together. You can’t get enough of his expressions. The noises you coax from him are so fucking orgasmic you want to record every one of them and make a mix to play next time you’re beating it solo.

You try to start working up a steady rhythm, but he stops you.

“Fuck, no. Not like that. Juth… move.”

Oh, goddamn it. He wants you to mimic the movements your tentadick would be making, if you had one.

OK. Fuck, OK. Yeah, you can do that. You’ve always known you were going to grow up to be a kinky bastard, anyway. It’s practically in your genes. You can do this.

“Shit, are those…”

There is definitely something wrapping around your finger. Numerous somethings. Christ on a cracker.

“Yeah, more tentacleth. Now thut up and pail me.”

The ones inside of him are short and clustered together. For one second you start thinking about seaweed, but then you decide that line of thought is not conducive to you ever wanting to fuck or pail him again and shove it aside. Instead you start thinking what a massive fucking shame it is that your dick won’t fit inside him, because you can only imagine how good what you’ve got against your finger right now would feel while you pounded him into the mattress. Or ceiling. You’re not picky, so long as you’re not fucking bound and gagged.

“Dave…”

You drag your attention back to his face, expecting another command, only to realize that he’s got his eyes closed and his head rolled back and _holy fuck he was moaning your name._ A life-long dream fulfilled right there, one you’d had since you downloaded your very first porno, and you weren’t even paying attention.

You have a new goal in life, and that goal is getting Sollux Captor to scream your name.

You fix your teeth around his neck, nipping and sucking in turn. You sweep your tongue straight up his neck and drag him back towards you so you can get a taste of those pretty black lips. You press hard on the point inside of him the moment you catch his tongue, just so you can feel his moan. His stubby nails drive into your back. He cuts off the kiss first.

“Dave, fuck! Dave, pleathe. Pleathe.”

You bite down on his shoulder as hard as you dare. You doubt that was what he was begging for, but you don’t hear him complaining. You are going to leave the biggest fucking mark on him. You wonder if it will be the same color as his blood and how bright it will be.

“Pleathe. Ah!”

You can tell he’s close. His bulges are practically fighting around your wrist and his back is a taunt curve. But you’re still not prepared when it finally hits.

He comes screaming and swearing into your shoulder. The point at your fingertip gives and something pushes your finger out with remarkable force, but your hand doesn’t have very far to go with the way he’s still twined around you. Your hand just hangs there, trapped just as effectively as your whole body was earlier, as a rush of oily fluid floods out of him.

But that’s not the strangest part. The strangest part is how he just seems to keep going. The screams cut off, but he stays tense in your arms, shivering against you and holding on so tight you feel like he’s going to leave bruises. What starts as a flood turns into a waterfall, then to a steady stream. Jegus fuck, you realize, he’s _still_ coming.

You can’t tell how much time has passed when he finally starts to relax against you. Maybe it’s been a minute, maybe ten. The flood ebbs down to an uneven trickle, almost like a pulse and perfectly in time with every whisper of “fuck,” “thit,” and “Dave.”

“You finally coming down?”

He doesn’t answer, just shifts closer to you. He’s making that weird purring sound again, and fuck if it isn’t the sweet sound of success. The bulges around your wrist slip away, no doubt back inside of him. The thought makes a final shiver flare across your exhausted nerves.

Your bare ass touches down on something cold, and you realize you’re finally on the ground again. It is uncomfortable as hell. You are sitting on at least four wires as big around as your thumb. And yet there is still a part of you, and a very large part at that, relentlessly glad to be back on solid ground.

“Sweet terra firma. How I have missed you.”

“I’m thorry, I didn’t realithe you were that inconvenienthed by being in mid-air. I’m thure you can underthand where my confuthion ith coming from, what with how all I heard coming from your big, fat mouth wath ‘Oh pleathe, Tholluthks, pail me harder’.”

You punch him in the side because it’s the nearest thing in reach, but your arms are like noodles. You do, however, smear some of his weird-ass alien come back on him.

Which draws your attention back to the fact that your entire hand is covered in weird yellow shit. You are literally dripping on him. Which gets you to wondering where the rest of it went.

The answer, it seems, is in a bucket. A fucking _bucket._ Christ, of course there’s a fucking bucket. You were a fool of Egbert-level proportions to think that you could get through this process without at least one bucket. You can’t tell how full it is from your current angle, but there’s a hearty pool of Sollux’s special brand of yellow splattered all the way around it.

“Hehe. Not what you were ethpecting, I gather?”

“That’s your bucket?”

“Pail.”

“I am not cleaning that up.”

Sollux looks about ready to bitch at your insensitivity again, but you start laughing before he gets a chance.

“Chill out, man. I’m just messing with you,” you say, nudging your forehead against his. You have a ridiculous urge to cuddle with him that is being thankfully counteracted by the mess on your hand. “This… Wow. This is insane. And I do mean that in the best possible sense of the word.”

“Hehe, yeah, it kind of ith, ithn’t it?”

“But it’s going to happen again, right? Because…” Because you’ve only scratched the surface on all the different ways you want to touch him, and you’ll probably die from an aggravated case of blueballs if he tries to pull the plug now.

“Definitely,” he grins, looking almost as relieved as you feel.

Good to know you’re not the only one over the moon at this point. But that does beg the question…

“Sweet. So, uh…”

“What?”

“I was just wondering if there’s any mating rituals I’ve got to perform to secure a spot in one of your quadrants or if I accidentally fell ass-backwards into matrimonious polyamory when I finger-fucked your sacred nether-hole.”

“Are you athking for my quadrant, Dave?”

“That depends on whether or not you’ve got a ring for my pretty, pink finger.”

“Tho now you’re athking me to marry you.”

“Shit, dude. How many pornos did you watch?” you ask, genuinely surprised that he decoded the cultural reference.

“All of them.”

“No shit?”

“No thit.”

“Where the hell did you find the time?”

“Dave, we’re dead.”

“Yeah, but still.”

“I watched motht of them while you were buthy throwing your bitch-fetht.”

 **== > Dave: Suddenly remember everything that happened before the awesome sex.**

Oh, goddamn it. You find yourself suddenly completely incapable of staying in your current position, and not just because you can acutely feel the wire-prints indented in your rump.

It must be showing on your face because Sollux follows you like an indecisive shadow over to his computer desk, where he put your shades. You slip yours on one-handed (a skill that you mastered by spending many a rainy day in front of a mirror), then hand him his. The look on his face is nothing short on the pathetic-o-meter of “kicked puppy.”

“Dave…”

“What?” you snap, unintentionally harsh. Why does your cool always desert you when you need it most?

Sollux grabs you by the arm with his free hand and you fight the knee-jerk reaction to pull away as fast as humanly possible.

“Look, we juth thpent the latht theveral minuteth of our afterliveth blithfully ignoring what mathive freakth we are. And I really fucking enjoyed it.”

His eyes drop, his fingers tense on your arm, and you’re pretty sure that was your cue to say something reassuring because once the moment passes he flies straight off the handle.

Familiar red and blue psionics (with an unsettling emphasis on the blue) spark around his horns as he stalks over and shoves his pants back on, bitching all the while.

“Or, fuck, maybe that wath juth me. Maybe you’re too buthy being an inthufferable cooldouthe whothe friendth actually care that he’th dead to know what it feelth like to be a mutant freak. Thit, what wath I even thinking? What could Dave Thrider of all fucking people ever know about being a monthter like me?”

 **== > Dave: Avert crisis.**

“Let me go, Dave.”

“Nope.”

This is awkward as hell with you still in nothing but your birthday suit. You are so smearing bulge-goo and jizz all over the ass of his jeans, but you have no intention of letting him go.

You really can’t do shit about your bubblemate’s sudden and occasionally violent mood-swings. Except sometimes cause them. Every so often hurricane Captor blows into town and indiscriminately wrecks everything in a one-afterlife radius. And rapes all your electronics. Facts of life, plain and simple. Sometimes he just disappears completely for days on end. Other times he spends full weeks ignoring your existence as he literally flies from project to project, talking to his stupid purple bees in his insane computer language.

And there’s fuck all you can do about it, usually. By the time you catch the warning signs, such as the little psi-rotechnic shows that you’re not entirely sure he has control over, it’s too late. All you can do is run for cover or get caught in the catastrophe.

But you’ll be damned if you’re not going to at least try this time.

“You want to thpend the next week on the theiling?”

“Nah, I’d rather spend it chilin’ on the couch with my best bro. Unless you’re planning on joining me up there.”

“I thought John wath your betht bro.”

“Best alien bro. It is you, man. It is you.”

You nuzzle your nose into the back of his head. It feels like the natural thing to do, right up until the moment you realize it feels so natural because it’s one of those things Bro used to do to you.

“You mean monthter-bro.”

“Man, if that was bothering you, you should have said something. I know that to the untrained eye Strider-brand affection and abuse look similar, but I figured you could tell the difference by now.”

“I’m not an idiot and you’re not as obtuthe as you pretend to be.”

“But it still bothers you.”

“It doethn’t. I wath making a point, not complaining. Now would you pleathe get the fuck off me?”

 **== > Dave: This isn’t working. Try a different approach.**

“Sure. I’ll let you go. Just let me say one thing first.”

“I’m waiting.”

You take a deep breath. Sollux crosses his arms across his chest, awkwardly thanks to the way you’ve still got your own arms around his middle.

“Shit… Alright. I admit it. You got me.”

“Pretty thure you’re the one who’th got me.”

“You know what I mean. Don’t be a dick.”

“Inthufferable prick.”

“Psychic little shit.”

“Horny bathtard.”

“Do you even know what that means in human terms?”

“All of your pornoth. All of them.”

“Then exactly how am I the horny one? As I recall, I was the one pinned to the ceiling while you stuck your hand down my pants, not the other way around.”

“How many timeth a day do you think about pailing your bro? From all the timeth I’ve witnethed memorieth of him half-naked, I’d gueth the numberth are near athtronomical.”

“Woah, what?”

“Remember that thing I did with KK?”

“Where you made him…”

Oh, _shit._

“You do that all the fucking time. Either it’th that freaky, dead-eyed marionette or your bro wearing nothing but jeanth or a wet towel. I theriouthly don’t want to know what it’th like inthide your thinkpan.”

“You’re kidding.”

He’s got to be. You have not been making bubble-ghosts of Bro out of subconscious, horny will-power.

“He hath a pair of really thort, tight panth with ‘printheth’ written across the ath in tiny crythtalth.”

Goddamn it, but you know exactly what he’s talking about. He’d been collecting them ironically for years, but he didn’t start wearing them around the house until after… you know. It was like he was intentionally trying to be the biggest, ironic cocktease on the planet. (Which makes perfect, ironic sense, given that he’s got the biggest cock on the planet.)

“You’ve got a thing for printhetheth, huh?”

“Assholes, more like. So, you done flipping your shit?”

“Yeah. Thorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m an ass. I am also ready to spend the rest of eternity… How did you put it? ‘Blissfully ignoring what massive freaks we are and really fucking enjoying it’? I’m on board with that plan if you still are.”

You can do this. You think. Probably.

Fuck, you want to do this. That’s the important thing, right? Bro’s dead. You’re dead. And yeah, maybe there’s a chance that one day you’ll find Bro out there somewhere. Assuming he hasn’t shacked up with another dead Dave or some bullshit. But even if you do… so what? This doesn’t change what you had with him anymore than it changes what Sollux had with Karkat. You’ll figure out the future when it gets here. Sollux is right. The future isn’t your problem anymore. You’re dead. You’ve got to learn to leave all the serious stuff to Alpha-Dave now. The only thing you need to worry about is what’s stuck in this tiny little bubble of an afterlife with you. And by that metric, this is undeniably the right choice.

He twists in your arms and you let him. You even meet him half-way, just as eager to get at his lips as he is yours.

“So,” you say when he finally pulls back. “What do you say?”

He’s got this grin on his face so sweet and dorky you wouldn’t believe it wasn’t photoshopped if you hadn’t seen it with your own eyes.

“Hehe. Thounds good to me.”

 **== > Dave: Retrieve your boxers like a gentleman, son.**

 “Whelp, not to cut the warm afterglow short or anything, but I’m destined for the shower. Unlike some people, I’m not accustomed to being covered in slime.”

You wiggle your gooey, yellow fingers in his face. You are sorely tempted to put a nice, fat drop of it right on the end of his nose, but you think that just may be crossing a line.

“It’th not thlime, it’th genetic material. Get your hand out of my fathe!”

“Or what, you gonna bite me?” you taunt him.

“I wath thinking more like I’d dump my pail out all over your thupid, fat head. Not like I need to thave it for the droneth now.”

He flicks a finger upwards, drawing your attention to the pail hanging right over your head.

“Shit!”

You jump back into monster-dork’s personal space, hoping he’s not desperate enough to coat the both of you. Or talented enough to still get just you.

“Not cool, man. Not cool.”

“Hehehe.”

“Dude, the goal here is less slime, not more.”

“Tho thop mething around and let’th go get cleaned off.”

“Is that an invitation I hear?” you grin.

 “If you want it to be,” he grins back. “But there’th thomething I’ve got to tell you firtht.”

“Can it wait? ‘Cause I think this stuff is starting to fuse with my skin. Your genetic material better not stain.”

“Thith won’t take long.”

“Alright,” you say, giving him your full attention. “What is it? You gonna tell me that you just impregnated me with your alien love babies or something? ‘Cause if that’s the case, you better be willing to pay child support and cough up for the liposuction when my tits start sagging.”

“I have no idea what the fuck you just thaid.”

“At least you’re honest enough to admit it.”

“Dave, I’ve theriouthly got to tell you thomething.”

“Then say it already. I’m not trying to stop you.”

“OK, tho… Fuck.”

He’s doing the awkward nerd shuffle, for some reason.

“Sollux, we just fucked on your ceiling. What’s there left to be nervous about?”

“Right…” he tepidly agrees.

“So?” you prompt when the silence drags on for too long for your short patience.

“Tho… You know how I thaid that I had blue and red eyeth when I wath alive?”

“Yeah.”

“And how normal troll eyeths are yellow with black pupilth?”

“Mmhm.”

“And how my tongue ith kind of thplit on the end, and how motht trollth have two hornth, but I’ve got two theth of two?”

“Yep. You’re doubly symmetrical. We’ve been over this. You’ve even got two…”

Two tentadicks. The dude’s got two bulges. It hadn’t once occurred to you that the two bulge thing may not be normal for trolls.

“Yeah… Motht trollth don’t have two of thothe,” he says, toeing the wires at his feet. “And motht trollths… uh.”

He points at your stomach, where the red and blue goo is still visible over the top of your boxers.

“They don’t have the nice color-coding you have, huh?”

“Yeah, tho… That’th thort of why I dethided we thould… you know. I juth wanted you to know that I’m apprethiating how little you know about trollth juth ath much ath you thould have been apprethiating how little I know about humanth inthtead of flipping the fuck out. Tho you can thop treating me like a fucking printheth and take advantage of me already.”

 “Hold the phone. That was a pity-fuck?”

You don’t catch your mistake until you see his cheeks start to flush special Sollux yellow.

“Uh… Yeah? I gueth. I mean, if you want it to be. I wath planning on not putting a quadrant on it thinthe I know your thpethieth doethn’t do that, but if you want to—”

You cut him off, because you seriously do not want to go down that road right now.

“No, I meant… It’s a human figure of speech. I was not talking about quadrants.”

“Oh.” The blush noticeably does not go away. “Tho, what doeth ‘pity-fuck’ mean in human termth?”

“I just meant… So basically what you’re saying is that you decided we should fill a pail so you could even the scales?”

He shrugs.

“It juth theemed like a good time to thow you my mutation.”

“Since you’d already seen mine.”

“Yeah, that wath bathically what I wath thinking. Ith that not OK?”

“Dude, that is the definition of a pity-fuck. You were feeling sorry for me, and it made you want to fuck me.”

Jegus, you just lost your virginity in a pity-fuck. This is a record low, lower on the cool-scale than dying even your most pitiful, wasted death. The afterlife cannot possibly get any more pathetic than this.

“Yeah, but I don’t thee how that’th a bad thing. You pity thomeone, tho you try to make them feel better by thowing them you’re pathetic too. That’th the bathith of all red romanthe.”

“Jegus, now you’re calling me pathetic.”

“How ith that bad? I’ve called you pathetic a hundred timeth before! I wath telling you you were pathetic right before we pailed! Why ith it bad now?”

“Dude, you’re not making it better. Just stop.”

“I’m not trying to make it better, I’m trying to figure your methed up verthion of romanthe out.”

“Come on. We’re hitting the showers now, before this gets any worse.”

“It’th not my fault! Thingth were going great until you brought up pity.”

“I brought up pity? You brought up pity, with all your talk about how I had pathetic mutations! You started it!”

“No, you were the one who tharted it. I juth finithed it.”

You open your mouth to argue, but psionics clamp it shut.

“Thee? It’th finithed.”

You try to hiss out ‘cheater’ through clenched teeth. It doesn’t come out well. He presses a finger to your bared lips to silence you before you even get the first syllable out.

“Abluthionth, Dave. We need them.”

He backs away and goddamn it, but he’s got you psychically trailing behind him, floating like a puppy right at his heels. You don’t bother fighting. You know exactly how useless it is.

“Jegus, you’re a bossy little bastard, you know that?” you tell him once you feel the pressure on your jaw give.

He just grins at you in reply, and in that instant you know without a doubt that you have an after-lifetime worth of psychic bondage bullshit to look forward to.

And you wouldn’t have it any other way.

 **== > The End.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "rap" segment is basically me plagiarizing Frank Sinatra's song "Body and Soul." With lots of liberties.
> 
> Will probably at some point combine all of these into one big chapter. Mainly because I think the first chapter (the dream segment) has a really different feel from the rest of the chapters, and I kind of want to showcase the "real" segments more. To be honest, I genuinely laugh every time I go back and re-read the segment where Dave wages war on the balloons. I love that segment. Which probably sounds conceited, but if you can't make yourself laugh, how are you supposed to make anybody else?
> 
> So, yeah. Will probably make this one big clusterfuck of a chapter once I'm sure I won't confuse anyone who's been following along and waiting for part 4.


End file.
